Business can teach education how to beat drastic failures
June 5, 2009
By Hoosen Rasool
Politicians and business leaders talk glibly about making South Africa globally competitive. But it is naive to think we can achieve this without drastically improving our underperforming public schools.
A country cannot be world class without a world-class workforce. And a world-class workforce requires world-class schools.
Ask any South African business competing in the global marketplace what it is to come up against a world-class workforce, and they will tell you that hyperefficiency, innovation, technical know-how and mastery of knowledge are the order of the day.
The government's contribution to public education remains our largest investment. Education spending has grown 14 percent annually for the past three years and accounts for R140.4 billion in 2008/09. This is high relative to other emerging market economies. It demonstrates a realisation by the government of the need to create an educated and skilled citizenry.
In spite of this spending, our inadequate public schooling system continues to bedevil growth, exacerbate unemployment, stifle tertiary institutions, retard industry competitiveness and generally weaken the productive capacity of the economy. Sadly, in an area where progress is most critical - education - it is most lacking.
Improving our schools will not come from slicing and dicing department structures, a tsunami of policy reform, good intentions, new education palliatives or throwing more money at the problem. We do not need another panel of Harvard experts telling us what we already know. Nor will the battle be won within the inner sanctuaries of administration buildings.
It will be won classroom by classroom, district by district and province by province, by a dogged political will to hold every employee in the schooling system accountable for their performance, or the lack thereof. The Americans call this house-to-house combat.
So what must education ministers Blade Nzimande and Angie Motshekga do to rescue our failing schooling system from a state of constant dysfunctionality? The priorities I offer are unpalatable to some, but vitally necessary. They are common sense, practical and inexpensive. These five priorities, if acted on, will move schools out of deep crisis.
The first priority is to reinstitute performance management at individual and organisational levels. Market discipline is the key, the ultimate form of accountability. Schools subjected to market discipline are more successful than those that are not. Staff should be rewarded for success and penalised for failure. This principle works well in business, and when applied to public schools, it has led to dramatic improvement.
In practice, this means every person in the employ of the education department must sign a performance contract with clear, measurable outcomes. They must be evaluated at least twice a year. Underperformance must be tackled developmentally and, if it persists, through sanctions within the law. The simple maxim "what gets measured gets done", should permeate the culture of the entire schooling system.
At an organisational level, school managers and education officials must be held publicly accountable for the performance of their schools and departmental units.
The second priority is to underpin performance management with compensatory practices. The schooling system is an anachronism. The best teachers and managers are paid the same as the worst. Teachers in scarce subjects are paid the same as those in abundant supply. Paying the unfit the same as the best and brightest is a recipe for mediocrity, if not failure.
In Winning, Jack Welch writes: "Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean."
Remuneration should be tied to productivity gains. Successful companies use financial incentives and rewards (as well as disincentives and penalties) to encourage desirable performance. The motive is not altruistic: better employees are paid more because they produce more. Treating all the same sends the wrong signal to those who work the hardest against all odds.
The third priority is to build manager proficiency. Unless schools and departments are staffed with competent managers who have mastered the skill of managing people, resources and operations, and can implement effectively, schools will continue to produce dismal results. The collapse of effective teaching around the country is indicative of seismic management failures.
Generally, education managers have limited managerial skills and are unable to respond to community, or client, needs. They lack the discipline of execution and do not know how to deal with problems.
They do not understand the changing national and global contexts in which they operate, and the impact of these. Management programmes offered by tertiary institutions are hopelessly unresponsive to the needs of education managers. Issues such as globalisation, economics, entrepreneurship, risk, ethics, productivity, marketing, human resources, performance and change management, leadership, the environment, quality and customer service are lacking.
Moreover, the practice of managing is dispensed by lecturers who have barely managed a hot-dog stand, let alone an organisation in a modern economy. A business school approach, less costs, is needed.
The fourth priority is closing the gap between results promised and delivered. Ram Charan, in his magnificent book, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, says execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today. Its absence is the biggest obstacle to success and the cause of many disappointments mistakenly attributed to other causes. This applies equally to our schooling system.
Education employees must understand and practice the discipline of execution, which cannot be delegated to others.
The fifth priority is the most difficult. A compact with the trade union movement is needed to improve the quality of teachers and create an enabling learning environment that is conducive to nation building.
Chanting mantras about teacher rights and the lack of facilities is meaningless if teachers and their unions do not accept some responsibility for problems in schools.
Unions need to shift from being seen as a negative protest movement to a positive force for public good. Fighting for bread and butter issues is not inconsistent with demanding that members uphold high standards and subscribe to the ethos of effective teaching. This perspective forgoes the confrontational mentality and adopts a shared obligation to improve outputs.
A business perspective not only sheds light on the problems in schools; it suggests solutions. Business techniques and discipline have much to offer a bureaucratic and wasteful schooling system. The mistakes, excesses and oversights of business, particularly of late, are lessons that education managers should take heed of.
The strategies of business to keep costs down, manage operations, hold people accountable and respond to customer needs are important, proven lessons for education.
The aim is not to make schools businesses; it is to teach schools to be driven by results. It is high time for better results.
Hoosen Rasool is the managing director of the Management College of Southern Africa. He writes in his personal capacity
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